POV: Dave Carnie’s Adidas Away Days Premiere

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Dave Carnie and company, Chris Nieratko; not sure if Dave’s still feeling well at this point. Pic O’Meally

I was stricken by diarrhea at the Adidas premier. I’ve been attending skate video premiers for nearly 30 years and I can’t recall ever taking a shit at one. I want to say that Away Days gave me diarrhea, but that would be inaccurate because my issues began before the video even started. I suppose I could blame it on waiting in the tremendous lines to get in? What a shit show. I went to the Vans Propeller premier at the same location, The Orpheum, last year and they seemed to have their shit a little more organized than Adidas. To Adidas credit, the Orpheum was a last minute, second choice venue—the original location was a large warehouse in east LA, but apparently it was adjacent to a murderer, or a drug dealer, or a drug dealing murderer, who was under LAPD surveillance.

So the cops told Adidas that it would be unfortunate if their video premiere coincided with their raid on the drug dealing murderer’s compound and they suggested it would probably be best if Adidas found another location to host their party. “Like, oh my god, that’s sooooo LA!”

»The big news from the premiere: Daewon Song and Marc Johnson are now on adidas«

I wish Away Days was the cause of my diarrhea because then they could use my quote as an endorsement on their movie posters: “Dave Carnie from Kingpin Magazine calls Away Days, ‘Shit-your-pants good!’” The truth is, I have no idea what gave me diarrhea, but it was fucking gnarly. When isn’t diarrhea gnarly? I’ve heard the term “mild diarrhea” used before, but isn’t that just a regular shit? It struck while I was drinking beers in the lobby and talking to people. “Oh no,” I thought myself when the bubble guts began. (“Bubble guts” is a brilliant term I learned from Stevie Williams.) I excused myself from whatever random bullshit video premiere conversation I was engaged in and visited the bathroom. There were three urinals and only one stall that was, of course, occupied. “Fuck,” I thought.

I wasn’t ready to erupt, my situation wasn’t dire yet, so I decided to get a seat in the theater and wait til the video started so that I could, presumably, have the bathroom to myself. As the audience in the theater grew, so did the pain in my ass. It became abundantly clear that I wasn’t going to be able to hold it ‘til the video began and so I made another run to the toilet hoping it was unoccupied this time. Nope. Now things were dire. As I stood there outside the toilet contemplating my next move, the crowd in the theater erupted. And suddenly all the stragglers who were hanging around smoking weed in the alcoves or necking on the stairs went running past me. “Holy shit! Something is happening and I can’t miss it!” The reason for the stampede? Snoop Dogg had taken the stage.

»I would lose a pair of boxers, but that was a small price to pay«

I sauntered into an empty bathroom and opened the door to an empty stall, dropped my pants, and emptied my ass into an empty toilet. It was one of those diarrheas where my butt just barfed and barfed and barfed. There was nothing solid in the torrents of shit that sprayed out of my ass.

Dismay: Dave’s diarrhea! Pic: guess who…

Kerry King of Slayer once described it as a “shit storm.” What was amusing to me was how long it lasted. It was like my anus was a faucet and I was drawing a mud bath. What was not amusing was the back splash. My cheeks and the backs of my legs were shellacked in shit. Even if this had happened to me at home right next to my shower I would have been bummed on the amount of cleanup this muck was going to require, but I was in a public bathroom at a fucking video premiere.

All during the cascade of excrement that sprayed out of my ass, I was serenaded by the sweet sound of Snoop Dogg’s voice as he introduced the video. “Yo! What’s up Los Angeles?” he said to deafening applause. Actually, I have no idea what he said because I had far greater concerns, but I’m pretty sure you can probably imagine he said a bunch of stuff that really didn’t mean anything, but sounded pretty cool. I was actually able to derive some comfort from just hearing his soft voice mumbling stuff in between bursts of applause. It was a soothing reprieve from the shower of waste that was shooting out of my ass.

While Dave was hitting the bowl hard… pic: O'Meally

I recalled a moment during the Vans Propeller video premier when I had to get up to take a piss simply because I had ingested too much free beer before the video began. I got up, unfortunately, during one of my favorite skaters’ parts, Pedro Barros, but I could hold it no more. Ever since I missed his part because of my bladder, I’ve referred to Pedro Barros as PEEdro Barros. I recognize that this joke is only funny to me, but I mention it because I created a similarly bad joke as I sat there on the toilet in complete misery huffing the noxious fumes that were escaping from between my legs during Snoop Dogg’s introduction to the Adidas video: “Snoop Dogg?” I thought. “More like POOP Dogg.”

»Gonz is the one and only Gonz, imbibing the whole thing with his legendary style and comic relief«

I wasn’t even mad when I saw that there was no toilet paper. “Of course there’s no toilet paper,” I cackled insanely as I pulled the last couple squares from the roll. “Why would there be? And why would I check the toilet paper status before I even sat down? What else would I write about if I didn’t almost die from dysentery in the fucking bathroom at the Adidas video premiere?”

By this point, my entire under carriage was covered in wet, cold dung. My first thought was, okay, there’s got to be paper towels out by the sinks, right? So the plan I developed involved me, first, taking off my underwear and using them to wipe up as much of the fecal matter as I could; then I would throw my boxers in the trashcan next to the toilet, pull my pants up, open the stall door, make a dash into the bathroom proper, grab some paper towels, and return to the stall to complete butt maintenance and cleanup. I would be free-balling it the rest of the night, and I would lose a pair of boxers in the process, but that was a small price to pay considering the condition I was in.

Away Days posse posing for O’Meally.

I got my shoes off, and I had just stood up with my pants and underwear around my ankles, when someone came into the bathroom, marched straight to the stall, and kicked opened the door before I could even react.

“OOPS! SORRY!” the fellow said as he hurriedly closed the stall door and beat it out of the bathroom.

»The cops: it would be unfortunate if the video premiere coincided with the raid on the drug dealing murderer’s compound«

I was traumalyzed at that point. I was so traumalyzed that I was making up words like “traumalyzed.” But I was probably not as traumalyzed as the kid who opened the stall door and found himself face to face with a husky, bearded man dressed in all-black with his pants around his ankles. My little wiener was poking out from under my shirt. My buttocks were cold and wet and it almost felt like they were dripping. I distinctly remember standing there like that when I clearly heard Poop Dogg introduce Mark Gonzales on stage. “The one, the only… Mark Gonzales!”

I hope you can forgive me for not providing you with a proper review of Adidas’ first skate video. It’s hard enough to accurately gauge a video during the chaos of a premiere, but I had my own aforementioned distractions to deal with as well. There were a few things I remember here and there between bathroom visits, though.

Away Days stage ready to roll… Pic: O’Meally.

Gonz is the one and only Gonz and I always feel like a little kid again when I see him skate. He doesn’t have a proper part in this video, but he appears throughout, imbibing the whole thing with his legendary style and comic relief. Which was absolutely necessary to the edit because the Adidas team is large and all over the map, both literally and stylistically. Gonz helped carry it along in places. The parts that stood out to me came from Rodrigo TX, Na-Kel Smith, Tyshawn Jones, Silas Baxter-Neal, and, of course, Dennis Busenitz. But, then again, I’m not an accurate judge here because I probably missed half the video.

The big news from the premiere is that Daewon Song and Marc Johnson are now on Adidas—that is if skateboard news can be called news in the proper sense of the word, which I don’t think it can. Because if you’re going to start talking about skateboard news, then you have to talk about hula-hoop news, too. But congratulations to Daewon and Marc.

Despite practically shitting my pants, losing a pair of underwear, and missing the House Of Pain performance (?), I’d like to congratulate Adidas on their first full-length skate video. Nice work fellas. I’d also like to apologize to the Orpheum’s janitorial staff, as well as the poor kid who opened my stall door—while I’m hoping to revisit what I missed that night, I’m sure he’s trying his best to forget what he saw.

Away Days architects: Jascha Muller and Torsten Frank, pic: O'Meally
Away Days stage ready to roll… Pic: O'Meally.
Away Days posse posing for O'Meally.
Away Days crew hyping it up on the way into the theatre. Pic: O'Meally
While Dave was hitting the bowl hard… pic: O'Meally
Dave Carnie and company, Chris Nieratko; not sure if Dave's still feeling well at this point. Pic O'Meally
Orpheum in LA: where it all went down. Pic: O'Meally
A young Jean Reno and a racoon… Lucas Puig and Feds, shot by O'Meally
Away Days hugs: Palace boys Blondy and Chewy; pic: O’Meally
Paul Shier and Snoop Dogg enjoying the Away Days stage. Pic: O'Meally

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